Co-op option could save B.C. health care

Re: Critical condition (News, Oct. 21)

Thank you for the excellent article on the funding cuts to James Bay Community Project.

The project serves a unique set of patients: a high percentage with disabilities, on welfare, more than 60 per cent suffering from mental illness and elderly with complex multiple chronic health issues.

If these cuts are implemented the result will be a reduction of preventative and primary health care, an increase in expensive crisis intervention including visit to hospital emergency departments. There will be a high cost in human suffering. 

As a long-time patient and past board member, I am saddened and worried by this action of our government which will increase health-care costs.  

But this letter is not only complaint. I also urge the province and the Vancouver Island Health Authority to look seriously, and promptly, at the co-operative option. 

More than 100 million people globally are served by health co-operatives. And the Victoria Community Health Co-operative, incorporated last year, is part of that highly efficient movement. 

It is time the provincial government fully support this community-owned approach to health care, started so many decades ago by Tommy Douglas.  An approach in which the member-owners (patients, practitioners and supporters) decide together how the scarce resources can best be used, and in which the emphasis is on maintaining health rather than waiting to treat acute symptoms.

Vanessa Hammond, Victoria

Government workers should bike to work

Re: B.C. government fitness centre comes with Wii-free zone (News, Oct. 16)

It seems to me in this time of extreme cuts to everything that is important to the community, government employees could go to fitness centres like the rest of us and pay for it. They could also walk or ride a bike to work.

The funds could then be used to keep the nurse practitioner at the James Bay Community Project and the building that the fitness centre is in could be used for low-cost housing.

J. Wilkinson, Victoria

Savoie’s bill deserves support

Re: MP wants transit tax credit expanded (News, Oct. 21)

If we are going to deal effectively with climate change, there will have to be many small steps as well as major shifts. One  proposed by Victoria MP Denise Savoie, as a private member’s bill, to give a tax credit to commuting car-poolers and cyclists certainly deserves support.

I would hope that everyone would contact their MP asking for their support. 

Robert McInnes, Victoria

Canada: land of ‘trusting fools’

Re: Refugee claims price we pay (Our View, Oct. 21)

Sadly, the forces of all-party electoral ethno-politics have dogged all efforts to reform a system that, courtesy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, has turned us into a willing doormat for all those bent on taking advantage of our

self-imposed impotence to protect the integrity of our borders.

As long as Ottawa’s political mind set stubbornly opposes the notion of real reform of the Western world’s most generous and porous refugee system, by hiding behind the universality of Canada’s sacrosanct Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we will indeed remain the land of trusting fools. 

Unique among such charters in Western democracies, by extending full civil rights to any and all non-residents having set foot on sovereign national soil, the charter has opened a veritable Pandora’s Box of refugee and immigration abuse and resulted in a virtual inability to effectively and expeditiously deal with undesirables freely flocking to our shores. 

As long as the charter serves as a shining beacon to all comers, guaranteeing full civil rights to any and all

non-residents, people smugglers won’t have to worry about losing so-called clients.

By enabling them to virtually guarantee their clients the protection of the charter, once delivered to Canadian soil, the charter’s unrestricted universality remains a veritable boon to a growing industry of people smugglers and continues to serve as a powerful magnet to all back-door migrants.

E.W. Bopp, Tsawwassen

Art vs. graffiti

Re: Outside the lines (News, Oct. 23)

Your article suggests graffiti is a form of art. The difference between art and graffiti is “permission.”

Troy DeSouza, Victoria